The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is no longer recommending Covid-19 vaccines to young children and pregnant women—even though the agency’s own research recommends doing so.
The lifesaving jab was removed from the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule Tuesday at the direction of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“Last year, the Biden administration urged healthy children to get yet another Covid shot despite the lack of any clinical data to support the repeat booster strategy in children,” Kennedy said in a video statement, promising that the move would advance the Trump agenda to “Make America Healthy Again.”
But exactly how Kennedy came to the conclusion that avoiding the booster would be healthier for those groups is unclear, especially when the CDC lists pregnancy as a condition that increases the risk of experiencing “at least one severe Covid-19 outcome” based on its own research.
Young children are also at a higher risk of developing serious illness. Babies 6 months old and younger face the same health risks as adults who are between the ages of 65 and 74, American Academy of Pediatrics vaccine expert Sean O’Leary told The New York Times last week.
But vaccination during pregnancy can actually offset that risk, granting children temporary immunity to some illnesses, such as Covid-19, before they’re even born thanks to the transfer of protective antibodies.
“These antibodies can help protect your baby from those diseases during the first few months of life,” according to the CDC. But after six months of life, they wear off—a detail that alarms medical experts about Kennedy’s new strategy, as removing the vaccine from the vaccine schedule will make it harder for parents and pregnant women to get the shot as insurance companies stop paying for them.
Whatever the rationale for stripping the vaccine, it was made without the input of the CDC’s usual advisers: Its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is not scheduled to meet until the end of June.
What is clear though is that Kennedy—a virulent vaccine conspiracy theorist—has made it his mission to attack vaccine access in his time atop HHS.
Kennedy’s contagious beliefs are spreading in spite of the science. Vaccines have proven to be one of the greatest accomplishments of modern medicine. The jabs are so effective at preventing illness that they have practically eradicated some of the worst diseases from our collective culture, from rabies to polio and smallpox, a fact that has possibly fooled some into believing that the viruses and their complications aren’t a significant threat for the average, health-conscious individual.
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